


Cross-currents

by Kerryl



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen, Sibling Bonding, babies are adorable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 18:58:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15149720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerryl/pseuds/Kerryl
Summary: Playing with his baby sister is very clearly preferable to preparing for standardized tests. And if he can make her laugh instead of cry, that's just an added bonus.His idea of how to make that happen is somewhat different from Sally's.





	Cross-currents

**Author's Note:**

> cross-current: _noun_. A current in a river or sea which flows across another.

Wails from her daughter’s crib.

Sally Jackson’s fingers still, hovering over her laptop’s keyboard. She sighs, shaking her head at the cursor on her screen, blinking mockingly at her.  
“Just when I was at a hard part,” she mutters. She raises her voice. “PERCY! Go check on your sister!”

Percy, currently engaged in half-heartedly attempting to make sense of the letters floating around on the page in front of him, is only too glad to drop his SAT prep book and go check on his baby sister.  
He scoops her out of her crib and takes her to his room, where he deposits her on the bed, surrounded by SAT and DSTOMP prep material. As he sits down next to her, she stops crying and gives him a toothless smile.

He smiles back. “Hey, squirt.” (He’s very proud of this nickname. He thinks it’s a subtle and clever reference to his heritage as Poseidon’s son.)  
“Do you want to see something cool?” She stares unblinkingly. He takes that as a yes, he reaches for Riptide and uncaps it. The pen elongates into a sword of gleaming bronze.  
He’s been half-expecting it, but he anyway feels a jolt of surprise when his sister starts gurgling and pointing at the sword.

_She has the Sight._  
“Cool, huh?” he asks. She giggles.

Sally has overheard, and jumped to an accurate conclusion.  
“PERSEUS JACKSON, IF YOU ARE SHOWING HER ANY SORT OF WEAPONRY, SO HELP ME-”  
“’Course not, Mom!” Percy yells back, hurriedly capping Riptide and burying it under a messy mass of practice test papers.  
“Don’t tell Mom,” he whispers to the baby as he hears angry footsteps coming their way.

Sally storms into the room fully expecting her son to be brandishing his sword in front of his impressionable baby sister. Instead she finds Percy (who has become a major sap ever since the baby was born) playing peekaboo with his giggling sister. Reassured, and touched by the scene, she returns to the living room and her troublesome manuscript.

Percy waits until he hears his mother’s footsteps fade away, then grins.  
“You didn’t tell Mom,” he whispers to the quietly gurgling baby, stroking her soft hair. “Good girl. I knew I could trust you.”  
She looks up at him and flashes that toothless smile.

 

_And somewhere in an ocean in the minds of the Fates, a cross-current forms over the tide of Percy Jackson's life._

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this just after Hidden Oracle. Recent canon may have messed with this, but eh.


End file.
